Exit Row (18 page)

F
IONA UNFASTENED HER
sweatshirt from her waist, stuffed it under her head, and lay back gingerly on the rough grass. Beneath the plant spikes the ground was stony. Lying on her right side, she protected her face with her arm. The world smelled like her childhood, flowers turning to syrup in the sun, the sharp scent of earth waiting to foam up when the rain hit it. There was a different, cleaner scent too, something of the way sliced cactus might smell.

So close to the ground, she was no longer troubled by flying mites. She thought about Greg and his girlfriend. Would Lee have given up photography for her? But she would never have asked him to, any more than he would have made similar demands of her. They were who they were. She would never stop traveling. And Lee . . .

Closing her eyes, she moved her left ankle experimentally, wriggling it from side to side. It still felt sore, but she supposed she could walk on it. She would be able to make it to the Explorer when Greg came back. It was peaceful here, with only the constant low buzz of nature and the drone of what she assumed was a crop duster, coming closer then fading away.

Surveillance . . . She thought of something she had only seen in movies. The police were always planting tracking devices on criminals' cars to monitor where they went. Day Star knew the cars they were driving. It would have been easy for them to plant something when they were mining the tires. Why hadn't any of them thought of it?

They would have to look when she got back. If only they had thought of it when they were with the mechanic.

She had a sudden sense that this was not a safe place to fall asleep. No black car had been following them from Santa Fe, but if they were anywhere close to where they shouldn't be . . . Twisting her body around slowly, she was finally able to stand up. She brushed off her jeans and T-shirt, pulling away a few stubborn brambles from her sweatshirt. She looked up toward Blanca Peak but could not see Greg.

He would be annoyed, she knew, if she went back to the truck. But it seemed safer than waiting on this path by herself. She could leave him a note, but she had nothing to write with. He would know, though, when he did not see her.

There was irony here—that he was doing the hard work when he had not even wanted to come.

A
S
G
REG MOVED
closer, still hugging the cliff, he saw that whatever it was was further away than it first appeared. It almost made sense to go back to the truck and try to drive up another road, except that there was the problem of locked gates and private property. He calculated the time it would take to get back to the others and decided to push on.

Searching for a cliff face with some natural footholds, he wondered if the helicopter could have been hired by relatives of other people who had never arrived. Someone smart enough to actually implement
his
idea. They must have seen the same thing he was heading toward. Had they stopped on the top? Was that why he no longer heard the copter? Stepping up onto a narrow ledge, he swayed for a moment under the weight of his pack. He considered bivouacking it, then decided against that. He might want to go down a faster way.

Greg kept moving laterally until he felt he must be directly under what he had seen, but the overhanging cliff face prevented him from looking that far up. It was the kind of climbing he least liked to do by himself. Still, there was a vertical crack of several inches that would lend itself to liebacking. Letting the pack slide off, he fished around inside and pulled out his climbing boots, his camera, and his canteen. After taking a long swallow, he laced and tied the boots, then closed up the pack tightly and pressed it against the stone. Much as he hated to leave it, he had no choice.

Pull with your arms, push with your feet
. But instead of moving, he stood there for a minute, arms crossed against his chest. Listening. A fall from here, eventually landing in the brush, would be painful but not deadly, though there was always the chance of a freak accident like Ben's.

He ran his hand back and forth over the rock, assessing it. There was enough unevenness to guarantee points of contact along the way. If not, he could always use a few wedging chocks. But it didn't look that hard. What worried him, he acknowledged finally, was hanging out in open air like a bug on a thread. He shoved away the image that came right after that, a giant pair of scissors snipping the thread.

What the fuck—just get on with it.

The rock was firm under his embrace. When he scraped at it with his nails, it barely flaked and he found himself moving more rapidly than usual. His shoes worked perfectly, holding him without slipping. Justifying their outrageous price, he thought, as he let himself hang off toward the right. The problem was always money, enough money to go where the real challenges were.

As he reached the top of the cliff, he grabbed at its stony surface with his hands, then swung his leg up to anchor his heel on a boulder that slanted backward. With a final, awkward push, he was over the top gracelessly, panting like a winded dog, his legs shaking. Never again, not alone, not with helicopters buzzing the trees.

But for now he was home free. He moved his head to clear it, then looked around. The blackness he had seen from below was actually an immense sheet of vinyl pulled tightly over something. It looked like the black plastic covers you could buy for cars. In a few places the seams had ripped and gaped, revealing the silver he had seen.

As he moved around, he saw something extended like the wing of a plane. But how could it be a plane? The plane hadn't crashed, and even if it had there would be luggage, stuff,
people
strewn around. But who would store a plane on top of a mountain?

Pulling himself to a crouch, he moved closer. A spike had been pounded into the ground to hold the cover down, and he wiggled it until it became unpegged. Cautiously he lifted the vinyl and saw a pair of blue fabric seats sitting incongruously upright. They were splashed with something dark, their metal feet twisted. Airplane seats, definitely.

There was an odor of fuel mixed with something sweeter, something decayed. Quickly he let the cover drop and moved back, still on his knees. No way was he getting any closer, no way would he stumble over someone's fucking
leg
. It was time to take a photo, to show he had been here and what he had seen, though he would have to pull up the vinyl again to do that. He was reaching out his hand when he heard the chop-chop of helicopter blades. It sounded as if it was landing on the other side of the destroyed plane.

Shit.
He stayed still, trying not to breathe until he heard the cruel crunch of brush as if someone was walking toward him. To hell with souvenirs, to hell with photos. He had to get away. But not by dangling over the cliff face again. He would have to go down the long way through the trees and meet up with the path. Except that his pack was on the ledge and no way was he leaving without his stuff. He would have to hide and wait them out.

Flattening himself behind a juniper tree, he felt his heart whacking in his chest like a moving army.
It doesn't matter to them where we are, as long as we're not where we shouldn't be
. He had had no idea what he would see from the mountain top, had secretly thought he would see nothing, but had been desperate for the climb. But this was proof that Dimitri could actually be dead, this incredible, smelly scene. He needed to get as far from it as he could, back to Santa Fe to find Dimitri's apartment and the program. Why had he let himself be sidetracked?

The others could do what they wanted. He was heading back to the rest of his life.

I
T TOOK
F
IONA
almost an hour to make her way back to the truck. The trail was not difficult, but it was uneven, and she had to protect her twisted ankle. Once, hearing a noise like a rattle, she froze and looked around for the snake. She stayed poised without moving for several minutes. But the sound did not come again, and she finally moved on. A little later down the path, she saw a gray hen coming toward her. She stopped, surprised, and it turned into a boulder. Only the tiny lavender flowers on stalks surrounding it were what they seemed.

When she saw the Explorer waiting up ahead like a faithful pack animal, its white sides streaked with dust, she almost cried. Her own body was sweaty and prickling with exhaustion, but she had had no more trouble walking. She was ferociously thirsty though; they should have thought to buy bottled water.
A bunch of city slickers under Western skies.

Reaching the truck, she saw that the driver's side was reclined back and Dominick was asleep. Rosa had climbed into the front seat beside him and was reading. She peered at Fiona over red-framed half-glasses. “Back so soon?”

“Well, I didn't go all the way.” She climbed into the backseat and left the door ajar so that closing it would not wake Dominick. Then she told Rosa what had happened. “It'll be a while till Greg gets back.”

“Have a book.” Rosa handed her
Examination in Blood
.

“Thanks, but I already bought it.”

“Did you really? Bless you.” Rosa looked delighted, but then her smile turned wistful and Fiona knew she was thinking of Susan.

“I brought it along, but I haven't had time to read it yet.” She considered telling Rosa the story of how she had been prompted to buy it for Karen Jensen, but Dominick stirred and mumbled and they stopped talking.

Keeping quiet so he could sleep turned out not to matter. Less than a minute later there was an explosion from the mountain, a sharp report that Fiona's jumping heart identified as gunfire. A pause, another shot, and immediately after it a third.

Dominick jerked awake, banging his stomach against the steering wheel. Catching sight of Fiona in the rearview mirror, he seemed to relax.

“Greg's still up there!” she cried.

“It's just hunters,” he said reassuringly, returning his seat to upright.

“Is it hunting season out here?” she asked doubtfully. At the farm, Eimer Jensen did not bring out his fluorescent orange vest and funny hat until nearly Thanksgiving. She had never heard of a license to hunt game in August.

“There are always poachers. Greg didn't come back with you?”

“He's climbing the mountain. He wouldn't let me; I hurt my ankle. But I was thinking, he'll need water when he comes down. I'm
dying
of thirst too. Maybe we could make a quick water run.”

Dominick grimaced. “Once I get out of here, I'm not driving back in. As it is, we'll have to back up.”

“Want me to get out and direct you around the boulders?”

He considered it and then nodded. “Good idea. The way this road curves, it's hard to see very far back. Just stop me if there's anything terrible.”

Fiona climbed out but walked a few yards down the road instead to look for Greg.

When she did not see him, she came back to the truck and circled behind it, trying to direct Dominick away from the worst rocks. It was a minefield. She winced as he had to scrape the truck bottom over a boulder shaped like a sleeping guard dog and narrowly avoided hitting a large upright triangle.

He was definitely right about not driving back in. Sighing, almost stumbling backward over a high rock herself, she stuffed down the memory of gunfire. It had definitely come from the top of the mountain. What kind of game would they have up there?

As she turned the bend that led to the better road, she realized that something larger than a boulder was blocking the way. Putting her palm up to stop the Explorer, she looked again.

Slanted across the good road, filling it completely, was a huge black four-wheeler that stood high off the ground. It was outlined in lights like an off-season Christmas tree and on the door was a painting of a frenzied horse's head, red lips open in a frothing scream. Painted below it in white script was “The Death Squad.”

Wonderful. The Death Squad
. If the truck had been parked facing ahead instead of across the road like a slash, there would have been the possibility of asking the owners to move so they could get by. But there was a different message here.

Fiona squinted at the windows, but they were tinted too dark to be able to see inside. The best she could hope for, she understood suddenly, was that the truck would be empty, the Death Squad off on business elsewhere. But as she started back to the Explorer, she heard the metal hinge of a door creak open behind her. Unwilling to look, she kept walking, then ran the last few feet to the truck. This time after climbing in, she banged the door shut.

“Lock the doors!” she screamed. She realized she was shaking and wrapped her arms around her knees to stop the motion.

“What is it?” Dominick asked, moving his eyes from the rearview mirror to look at her. “You mean those guys?” But as he said it he pressed the master lock. Rosa sighed deeply.

The men appeared at Dominick's window, one several inches taller than the other. Both were blond, both dressed in fringed black leather vests with Western tooling, white shirts, and jeans. They were even featured and could have been handsome, but their eyes were brown beads, their jaws too long for their faces.

The taller twin motioned at them with a small silver gun to get out of the truck.

“Stay inside; I'll handle this,” Dominick commanded. As he opened his door the two men moved to the front of the truck. Dominick stayed behind the door, using it as a body shield. “What's the problem?”

The man waved the gun again. “I mean all of you!”

“Oh, for God's sake,” said Rosa, shoving the woven bag off her lap as if this were in the same league as the bathroom jingles at the Powderbush.

Wasn't she afraid? Fiona's own heart was beating a frantic tattoo. But after Rosa got out and moved around to the front grille of the Explorer, she slowly opened the door and climbed out too.

“You from around here?” the gunslinger asked, smacking his gun rhythmically against his thigh.

“No,” Dominick said. “We're from New York. Is something wrong?”

“They got private property back where you come from?”

“Of course. But we didn't see any signs posted.”

He turned to his brother. “Hey, Jake, you forget to put up the signs again?”

Jake looked amazed. “You put up signs where you come from? Like in your driveways and stuff?”

“How can a
mountain
be private property?” Fiona asked as calmly as she could.

“We didn't know we were trespassing,” Dominick said quickly. “We'll be glad to leave.”

But the Death Squad grinned at that. They had beautiful teeth, Fiona had to admit, then thought how absurd it was to think about teeth
when they were about to be murdered by the Doublemint twins.

“You from New York too?” Jake was addressing her.

“Uh-huh. Iowa, originally.”

“That's right, you got that funny accent. Say
Long Island
for me.”

“What?”

“Not
what
. Long Island.”

What was going on? “Long Island.”

The pair nudged each other. “You don't say it right.
Lon-guyland
. If you're living there now, you're supposed to say
Lon-guyland
!” Then the gunslinger waved his weapon at Rosa. “Say ‘toilet.' ”

Rosa looked disgusted. “Toilet.”

Jake wiggled a roguish finger at her. “I bet that's not how you really say it. I bet you say
terlet
, don't you?
Erl
and
terlet
. Now say it right.” He reached into his holster and pulled out his own gun, a gun that Fiona had not allowed herself to notice.

“Toilet,” said Rosa stubbornly. “I'm not from Brooklyn!”

She's going to get us killed
. Fiona opened her mouth to give them what they wanted, but it was swallowed up in gunfire as Jake aimed his pistol at the ground near Rosa's feet. A rock shattered, a cyclone of dust spiraling up. He raised the gun to Rosa's chest.

“What the hell are you
doing
?” Dominick demanded, hoarse. He stepped around, blocking Rosa.

From the road came a siren.

The brothers turned on each other. “Shit!” Jake yelled. “You had to play games with them instead of—”

“You're the one who kept it up.”

“If you're shooting, shoot to
kill.
”

“Now what're you boys up to?” The small, dried-up character stepping around their truck looked less like a sheriff than an Appalachian apple-head doll, but Fiona knew from the set of his mouth that he was the law. Dressed in a turquoise-and-black checked shirt, his air of authority replaced a badge.

“Just having some fun with our new friends,” Jake smirked.

“Looks like they don't got the same toys as you. That's not fair.” He might have been talking to a pair of eight-year-olds.

The taller brother spat on the ground. “What gives you the right to keep on our ass this way? My lawyer says it's harassment!”

“Just happened to hear gunfire and came to investigate.”

“You're tailing us!”

“Not hunting season yet.”

Fiona's heart fell miles. If it wasn't hunting season, then what were the shots on the mountain about?

“You git on now,” he added, gesturing at the brothers, “or these good people may decide to make a complaint.”

Jake's brother spat again, a gob that landed on a yellow bush and hung, glistening. Everyone watched it, mesmerized.

The pair turned and stomped away.

The sheriff looked at Dominick. “No telling what they might have done. Glad I came along.”

“So are we!”

“But who are they?” Fiona gasped. She felt as if her body were dissolving.

He twisted his mouth. “They call themselves ‘The Death Squad.' ”

“I know, but who are they? Are they from around here?”

The sheriff looked uncertain as to how much he should tell her, then said, “They're Jesse Wilcox's boys. Jesse and Ginger Lee are decent enough folk, but they should have kicked these kids' butts years ago. Tried some of that tough love stuff.”

Another Day Star connection.
“Would they do things like flatten your tires?”

He peered at the Explorer. “You got a flat?”

“No, I just—”

“Honey, they'd do worse things than that. They used to like to lasso kids on bikes, pull them off the bike and drag them along the ground. For fun. Then they grew up and got this Death Squad idea. Going around, righting wrongs. Only their idea of right and wrong . . . It's what happens when you got too much money, too much time, and no good reason for being alive.”

But if they had been waiting for them in the truck, they couldn't have been up on the mountain shooting Greg.

“Don't know what set them off, but you don't want to go messing with them.”

There was the sound of an engine revving, a crash of broken shrubbery. It sounded deliberate, one last temper tantrum.

The sheriff opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Dominick held out his hand. “How can we thank you?”

“Just glad to help out.”

But Fiona wasn't ready to let him go. “Have you heard anything about a plane having problems around here?”

He pulled at his wrinkled chin. “A little two-seater banged into Mount Lindsay last week. That kind of thing?”

“No, bigger than that. There hasn't been anything unusual happening?”

“No . . . ” But then he brightened. “Up north around Monarch, a friend of mine's been complaining about a lot of mysterious comings and goings. Strange people in the area. He was thinking maybe drugs. Something like that?”

“Maybe.” But she felt excited. “What's the town again?”

“Monarch. Right in the mountains about fifty miles up.” He folded his arms. “If you don't have stuff to do around here, I suggest you get on out. I can't watch the Death Squad twenty-four hours, and they're mean dudes. I'll watch, make sure you get outta here and onto the highway.”

“That'd be great,” Dominick told him.

Hands were shaken all around.

“You have a good day now.”

“You too.” But Rosa, though restored to good humor, seemed to be studying the man as if he didn't fit into her scheme of things.

They climbed back into the Explorer and Dominick locked the doors.

“I'm too old for this.” Rosa exhaled, letting herself collapse against the seat. “I've never almost been shot before.”

Dominick nodded vigorously. “I think he just saved our lives. Don't get out again; I can make it from here,” he told Fiona. “The road wasn't that bad in the beginning.”

She nodded, troubled by something she could not yet define. It had to do with Rosa. And more urgently, Greg. “But what about Greg? One of us should go back and look if we can't drive back in.”

“Well, we certainly can't stay around here! That sheriff already warned us.”

“I know. But—”

“We'll come right back and wait for him on the road. Nothing can happen to us on a main road,” Dominick said.

“Okay.” But she vowed privately that she would walk back in. With water.

When Dominick finally reached the highway, he asked, “Which way?”

“Back the way we came,” Rosa said. “We know there are places not far away.”

“Yeah, there's that gas station.” Dominick waved to the sheriff, who was sitting in a white car opposite the mountain road, and signaled left. Then he gave them a stern look. “Next time, don't get out. That's the way mass murders happen. We could have all gotten killed.”